Law on supporting SMEs: Expect to double the number of export enterprises

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• export enterprises

At the seminar "What do businesses benefit from the Law on supporting small and medium-sized enterprises?" held on June 6, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Ministry stated that the Law on Supporting small and medium-sized enterprises was a precious gift for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Regarding support, the drafting committee has to consider supporting effectively in line with the State sources. The law's objective is to support enterprises in a centralized way.

Precious gift

According to Deputy Minister Dang Huy Dong, after a process of review and adjustment, the draft Law on supporting small and medium-sized enterprises has reached basic agreement. The draft law has been finalized to prepare for submission to the National Assembly and if it is issued, it will be a precious gift for SMEs. This law will help Vietnam to reach the target of 1 million enterprises by 2020.

Regarding the content of the Law on supporting SMEs, the representative of Planning and Investment Ministry said that the Law had two main points. Firstly, the Law defined the scope and objects of support. The support content had two parts, including supporting basic services which all the enterprises need, and supporting the majority of enterprises with 7 support contents such as support of information, legality, access to capital, premises, market.

The second content is the specific support programs, including 3 programs: support for new enterprises converted from household businesses; support the formation of creative start-up ecosystems; support the development of linkage groups among sectors and creation of sustainable value for the product.

Mr. Dong also emphasized that there would be no such thing like support money for each enterprise, after identifying the information group that enterprises need, the State would facilitate finding information and consult for businesses and widely publish information for businesses.

For example, about lychee growing households in Luc Ngan, there are hundreds of households growing lychee, but they can not identify the market and market’s taste, then the State will help to consolidate the value chain surrounding the lychee fruit and provide information on the lychee market, countries that have demand and countries that grow lychee in the same season with Vietnam.

"We support for organizations and individuals providing these services to businesses. There will be no such things as giving money to each household, each businesses which are raising pigs, growing lychee, such actions violate subsidy regulations and shall be subject to anti-subsidy fines, " Mr. Dong said.

Expect the Law to be implemented promptly

Reviewing on the draft law, Mr.Nguyen Van Phuc, Former Deputy Head of the Economic Committee of National Assembly, said that this was a necessary law for economic development and in this case, for SMEs. The necessity had been stated by the Government in the submission, which was verified by the Economic Committee of the National Assembly, and agreed by the business community, especially SMEs.

However, following this Law from the 13th National Assembly, Mr. Phuc said that the Law was submitted twice to National Assembly and "among the laws which I have been involved in, this is a difficult law project". The difficulty is that the law is issued to support SMEs while our economic law system has quite a lot of laws like the Law on Investment, the Law on Enterprises, the Law on Science and Technology... and these laws are related to SMEs. The Law on Supporting SMEs should help to provide specific support to SMEs in line with Vietnam's legal system.

"It was initially agreed upon building the law, but when it came to impact on other laws, the relevant authorities did not want to change the content of the law. This is the difficulty, in which we want a breakthrough in support for SMEs but do not want to change. We have not really got a unified opinion in creating breakthroughs in supporting SMEs " Mr. Phuc said.

Mr. Phuc also commented that the final draft before submission to the National Assembly showed that relevant agencies tried as much as possible to ensure the feasibility of the Law when it was issued.

Speaking about the difficulties of enterprises, Mr. To Hoai Nam, General Secretary of the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, said that there were six recently existing difficulties for SMEs such as difficulties in production and business premises, technology, capital and compliance with the law, and these difficult factors are related to each other. For example, a company has technology but it has no capital or premises then it can not operate.

Mr. To Hoai Nam expected that the Law on supporting SMEs would be implemented soon, as the slow implementation would reduce the preference of policy supporting enterprises, and he also expects to attract more non-State budget resources to support businesses.

In addition, the representative of the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises also expected that the Law would provide support to enterprises joining in the production chain, although Vietnam had many production chains, these were not complete because they were established naturally, they needed support of the State to complete production chains.

"I hope that the promulgation of the Law on supporting SMEs will help to double the number of export enterprises of Vietnam. Currently, Vietnam has about 48,000 export enterprises and in the integration trend, this is the development orientation”, Mr. Nam said.

By Hoai Anh/Ngoc Loan